Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

Kate Raworth

Feb 2017 · Chelsea Green Publishing

About this ebook

*The Sunday Times Bestseller

*A Financial Times Book of the Year

*A Forbes Book of the Year

*Winner of the Transmission Prize 2018

*Longlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2017

*Porchlight “Best Business Book of 2017: Current Events & Public Affairs”

The book that redefines economics for a world in crisis.

Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times.

Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike.

That’s why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design.

Named after the now-iconic “doughnut” image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (an image that appealed to the Occupy Movement, the United Nations, eco-activists, and business leaders alike), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like.

Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas—from ecological, behavioral, feminist, and institutional economics to complexity thinking and Earth-systems science—to address this question: How can we turn economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, into economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow?

Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.

"This is sharp, significant scholarship . . . Thrilling."—Times Higher Education

"Raworth's magnum opus . . . Fascinating."—Forbes

"Doughnut Economics shows how to ensure dignity and prosperity for all people."—Huffington Post

Ratings and reviews

This book has given me a much better understanding of the history and current state of global economics, and makes me wish all of us can join the author's vision to bring the world into the doughnut.

Crucially important for our future!

Great book from a very insightful author.

About the author

Kate Raworth is a renegade economist focused on exploring the economic mindset needed to address the 21st century’s social and ecological challenges. She is a senior visiting research associate and advisory board member at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and teaches in its masters program for Environmental Change and Management. She is also senior associate of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and a member of the Club of Rome. Over the past 20 years Raworth has been a senior researcher at Oxfam, a co-author of UNDP’s annual Human Development Reports and a fellow of the Overseas Development Institute, working in the villages of Zanzibar. She is also on the advisory board of the Stockholm School of Economics’ Global Challenges Programme and Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Resource Observatory. Kate lives in Oxford, England.